Madden NFL 2002

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Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005N7YI
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: August 22, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #22,283 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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  Video Games > PC Games > Sports > Football

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

• This is item 11 in The Madden Series.

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The Madden series is wildly popular on the console market, with this year's version on the PlayStation2 garnering all kinds of critical acclaim. The same can't be said of the PC version of Madden NFL 2002, however, which will leave football fans extremely frustrated, especially because none of the problems from last year's edition have been addressed. In fact, in most instances, things have gotten worse.

Madden NFL 2002 offers five modes of gameplay--Great Games, Multiplayer, Exhibition, Season, and Franchise--and all 31 current NFL teams, the expansion Houston Texans, and European teams. Franchise mode, which lets players manage all aspects of the team--including salary negotiations and signing and cutting players through multiple seasons--is good fun, and after a few seasons, meeting the salary cap can be quite challenging. On the flip side, the Great Games mode, in which a victory in one classic game will unlock other classic games, is especially disappointing, because it completely fails to re-create the playing styles of past teams. In fact, other than the original uniforms, there's no difference between playing a classic game and playing a game between two modern teams.

Graphically, Madden NFL 2002 looks fantastic, with excellent models, great motion capture, and smooth animations. Other cool effects include light reflecting off the helmets, realistic rain and snow effects, and nicely rendered stadiums. Pretty pictures are no substitute for good gameplay, however, and in that respect Madden NFL 2002 is extremely unsatisfying. The computer never runs the ball, and because the AI for the defensive secondary is so bad, it's common for a lackluster computer-controlled team to throw for 400-plus yards a game against a human-controlled team.

There are sliders for both human- and computer-controlled AI, which let you tweak various AI settings such as pass blocking, interceptions, and the ability to break tackles. If you fiddle with these settings enough you can improve some of the problems, but no amount of tweaking can turn this shoddy game into something enjoyable.

The frustrations continue with the controls, which are slow and unresponsive. In order to make quick cuts or spins, you'll need to press the applicable button a split second before you actually want to make the move. In addition, when playing on defense it's common to get burned on a pass play when you switch control to the player closest to the ball because any initial moves you make usually send you in the wrong direction.

The only truly fun aspect to Madden NFL 2002 is its multiplayer options. You can play against another person on one computer, or you can link up over the Internet. Playing over the Internet can be laggy at times even with high-speed access, but it's still preferable to playing against a super-powered computer opponent.

It's truly sad that EA Sports doesn't see fit to deliver a compelling football game to computer gamers, especially as Madden NFL 2002 is the only mass-market football game available for the PC. Hopefully EA Sports will get its act together next year and deliver a real football game. --William Harms

Pros:
• Great graphics
• Franchise mode and online play are a lot of fun

Cons:
• The AI is a joke
• Control isn't as tight as it should be
• Games play out very unrealistically

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful but flawed gem, October 25, 2001

By	Bjorn (Renton, WA United States) - See all my reviews

My impressions are primarily based on a 1.4ghz system with a High end 64meg video card (NVidia Geforce2 Pro) & 512mb of ram. I also have a 800mhz CPU which I tested it on. This game is the best current football sim. That said, it is not a great sim, but a good one. It has huge glaring flaws in some of the physics. And EA Sports is quite unreceptive to comments about things other then crashes. In other words, if it runs it's good enough. This is an unfortunate stance.

Graphics: (A-) Very good. Not flawless, but very well done. The weak points in the graphics would be the stadiums. The score board is just a drawing. The crowd and the players on the sidelines are just obvious flat, badly draw, 2d art. The catching, fumbling, and other things involving character animation is not well done. But more or less acceptable.

Sound: (C-) Ok but redundent. The number of different comments John Madden & Pat Summerall do is very very limited. You will hear the same exact comment a dozen or more times in a game. Quite dull. The stadium sound is decent. But the thing I miss the most is the taunting. Last years model had the funniest things the players would say. It added a nice bit of color which is sadly missing.

Play design/Play book: (F) This feature was present in last years model. And while it was weak last year, at least it was there. There is no playbook customization or play design of any kind this year. Very disappointing!

Game Play: (C-) The computer cheats badly (and obviously) and eny level of difficulty. This can be balanced with the sliders, but by default should this be needed?
Other areas such as pass rush, QB skill, etc can NOT be balanced with sliders since any movement has no discernable impact.
With patch 2.21 this part is better. Not perfect, and not really tweakable with the sliders. With default settings, pass rush is still NIL, QB's have an easier time going deep then passing short, etc. I think the most annoying aspect is that hitting the QB 20+ times in a game has no impact on his ability to play. It would seem that the QB being pummled should have at least some reduction in his skill.

Franchise mode:(C-) It works mostly. However the draft is heavy skewed towards just a few positions. Everyone in the league will soon have an all star TE or 3, and more FB's then you can shake a stick at. The trading module is pretty broken. The computer will never offer a trade. The computer teams pretty much don't sign free agents either. Want to help the computer?? Sign a bunch a free agents and trade them to the computer teams for low draft picks.
Player movement is too limited. Players seldom have comeback seasons, or the such. If they are young and deemed to have potentional they can, and typically will, improve. However there is no in season learning. There is no moving from position to postion. Want to play Rod Woodson at corner like the good old days? He will only play there with out of position penalties. It is not uncommon to draft a player with great potential and move him to another position. The NFL has several examples of former LB's playing Safety & so on.

Bugs/Crashes: (B) It doesn't crash often with the patches. A nice change from last year where it took 5 patches to improve system stability.
This time it was reasonablyh stable after 2 patches. It did not like my NVidia graphics card until I updated the driver. It would re-set the card's clock speed and ram speed to the lowest programmable level leaving the system partially unstable and the game unplayable. This was NOT a bug in the driver, since this is the ONLY game to ever have this problem. Updating to the latest drivers from NVIDIA.com solves this issue.
Giving it a "B" here is clearly being a bit too charitable, since I am not factoring in having to update drivers, and apply several game fixes. But if you do the same, you will probably also be pleased with the over all stablity. If you don't take these steps, be prepared for crashes, lockups, dumps to windows, etc.

Over all: (C) It does somethings quite well. It is pleasing visually. With a few obvious and glaring exceptions, it has most of the features we want, they just don't all work very well. Bottom line is this. I would rate it lower if there were anything to compare it to, but there isn't. Sadly, This is isn't the best PC football game, it is the only one.

Improved from last year:
--Player ratings are a tiny bit more detailed.
--graphics are improved.
--Stability is improved (comparison after the 2 patches, 2001 with all 5 or 6 patches is equally stable).
--Better sliders, most offer seperate tuning of computer and human players.
--Online play is supposed to work this year. I haven't bothered yet, based on how very badly it worked last year.

Worse then last years model:
--Playbook customization is gone.
--play design is gone.
--the hurry up clock is gone. And since the game manages time so badly you have to play with 8 to 10 minute quarters to compensate.
--sound. Removing the taunting and 'smack' talk removed much of the color from the game play.

Over all, it's slightly better then last years but not by much. It's disappointing to see how many of the flaws carried forward. Even most disappointing to see features being dropped.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 2001 was much better, September 3, 2001

By	Aaron - See all my reviews

If you're looking for a realistic football sim, definitly DO NOT buy Madden 2002.

#1. The pass defense is WAY out of whack! The computer will complete about 90% of it's passes against you, and complete all of it's long bombs. I don't know how on earth EA let this game get out! (and every TE is a superstar catching 15 passes a game)

#2. The screen pass is now impossible to do. Half the time the ball lands in front of the player, and even if you player does catch it, you are very lucky to get back to the line of scrimmage.

#3. The computer can't run the ball worth jack. The game play is so unbalanced in this way.

Ea also got rid of the accel clock feature, so you have to play 8 minute quarters to have a realistic game. (as in number of plays)

Don't listen to the reviews that say this is the greatest sim ever, they are most likely marketing plants from EA sports. They do this with every game. Go to any Madden forum and you will hear the wide spread complaints about this game.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Madden 2002, September 14, 2001

By	David Benfield (Maryland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have to agree with everything the last person wrote. The computer passes like a god..... it is almost impossible to get through his line. He can't run worth a lick though, making the game very one dimensional and uninteresting on defense. Almost every game I have played ended in scores of 50+ points to 30+ points. If the AI was better on Defense and the computer ran more and better on offense, this game would be awesome. Also there is no option to create custom plays. On a good note, the graphics are incredible and the motion of the players are ultra-realistic. Just a few tweaks and this game would be incredible (I hope EA is listening?!?)